Former heroin addict comes clean in recovery, finds new purpose

- Monroe News photo by KIM BRENT
Alexa Evans battled alcohol and drugs throughout her teen years and young adult life. Her addiction to heroin was the low-point that nearly cost her her life before agreeing to enter treatment. After spending a year in a faith-based recovery program, Alexa has replaced the void once filled with drugs with a new sense of spirituality and purpose and is now working with a church youth ministry in Imlay City, where she is living with family.

She started drinking at 11. By 14, Alexa Evans was smoking pot and having drunken fights with her boyfriend in the middle of the streets. At 15, it was painkillers such as Xanax. At 17, Alexa moved on to ecstasy and cocaine.

She dropped out of Jefferson High School by her junior year. She was stealing fifths of liquor three at a time from the grocery store. She was thrown in jail.

And yet she still hadn’t hit rock bottom. That came when she started trading sex for heroin. By 19, Alexa attempted suicide. The drug made her memories a blur.

“I wouldn’t stop using heroin,” she said. “It was my life. I didn’t care.”

Like many heroin users in Mon­roe, Alexa made it her choice to stick a needle under her skin (she preferred shooting into her hand instead of her arm). But her story also is very different from many others. She changed. She says she is done with drugs, and those close to her who have endured the pain, the lies and the horrific lifestyle also believe drugs are in her past.

“I knew I needed something, but I didn’t know what,” Alexa said while relaxing in her grandmother’s home in Detroit Beach. “I was so, so sad. But I love my life now. I have a purpose now.”

Alexa found a place that helped her. Life Challenge of Southeastern Michigan — a Christian-based min-i­stry in Detroit — saved her, and then she saved herself. Alexa, now 21, graduated and is now a youth minister in Lapeer, east of Flint.

To beat heroin, she had to decide to do it for herself. No one — not the courts, her family or her friends — could force her to change. She had to make up her own mind. And she did.

Raised by her single mother, Alexa entered adolescence and quickly chose a life of delinquency. She can’t remember one specific event, but the drinking just began. She was 11, an age where some girls are still in elementary school. Yes, she was angry, but Alexa doesn’t blame anyone for her decisions except herself.

“I don’t blame anybody and I don’t blame the environment,” she said. “I was a party girl. I was doomed from the start.”

Looking back, she describes a young life that spiraled out of con­trol. She made feigned attempts at taking on responsibilities, but there was always a constant: booze and drugs. It wasn’t just partying; it was a lifestyle. And it got worse and worse as she got older.

There were public fights, actual fists flying, with her boyfriends. Once it was in the middle of a Monroe street, and another time it was inside a Newport gas station store, where she described herself as “going psycho.”

“It was horrible,” she said looking back. “I was always in a relationship with a guy who treated me bad.”

By high school, she said she was too far gone to take academics seriously, so she dropped out. By then, she already was taking painkillers or ecstasy or snorting cocaine. The drugs today’s teens are taking can cause parents to recoil.

People in older generations commonly drank alcohol and maybe smoked some weed. Generally, though, that was the limit. But today’s teens and young adults are taking strong, addictive pills and shooting up heroin, something that most parents never would have considered at that age or any age.

“ We’re generation Rx, that’s for sure,” Alexa said.

This is how bad it can get: She once found a couple of Xanax pills on a public restroom floor.

“Of course I ate them,” she said matter-of-factly, as if the question regarding what she did with them was silly.

THE NEXT STEP

Those who venture into the world of heroin typically don’t do so as a plan; it just happens. Someone has the drug at a party or a gathering of friends, and often curiosity takes over. They hear about the intense, wonderful high and they figure, why not? As dumb as that might sound, users have said repeatedly that they don’t think of the repercussions. And they also don’t believe they would get hopelessly addicted because they have a sense of invincibility. It can’t happen to them. Until it’s too late. Soon their goal in life becomes very specific. And it’s all about one thing: getting more heroin by any means necessary.

Alexa saw it when she started hanging out with a guy she knew. She saw it but didn’t try it at first, so she just let it be. Then one day she wanted it. So she snorted it. And the hooks were in.

“I don’t know what possessed me to do it,” Alexa said, repeating words that many users and addicts have said.

Her life was so filled with booze and drugs that by 19 she already was a seasoned partier. She had eight years of abuse in her rear-view mirror. And as illogical as it might seem to most, heroin apparently was the next logical step. Besides, as Alexa said, she already had developed a taste for opiates. So she snorted some.

That was the beginning of the near-end. She spent time at Harbor Light, but that didn’t help because she wasn’t ready to get help. She doesn’t even remember the first time she shot up. But she does remember the many trips to Detroit to score heroin.

She and her friends would travel to the seediest parts of Detroit to get their fix. How they escaped harm all those times is anyone’s guess. But Alexa explained that the dealers didn’t mess with them because they didn’t want to lose their steady customers. Detroit, by the way, is where she went, she said, because the grade of heroin was so much better than what can be bought on the streets of Monroe. She calls it “city dope.”

“There’s a huge part of my life that’s just a blur,” Alexa said. ”I was high. Partying was just life.”

She spent 75 days in jail. She shared needles and smoked crack like it was oxygen. When she ran out of money, she turned tricks: she let men use her body in exchange for drugs. She attempted suicide by ingesting every pill she could find.

When she got out of the hospital, she continued doping. She wrecked a car. She got kicked out of her grandma’s house in Monroe and lived from place to place. She was smoking something out of a light bulb, something she doesn’t even remember what it was.

Her aunt and uncle had enough. One day they picked her up and took her to Life Challenge. A doctor who examined Alexa told her that had she been on the streets two more days in that lifestyle, she would have been dead.

TURNAROUND IN RECOVERY

On Feb. 17, 2012, Alexa found Jesus. It was an awakening of sorts. She was still in a post-drug fog, but something happened that would save her life and guide her toward normalcy and a purpose.

Life Challenge is a oneyear residential Christian growth program for men and women with lifecontrolling addictions. It claims to be more than a rehabilitation program.

“ We do not exist simply to help people become sober and clean,” the brochure said. “ We view drug addiction and alcoholism as a symptomatic of a much larger problem, separation from God.”

The cost is $500 to $750, far less than some rehab programs that are in the thousands. And, Alexa admits, Life Challenge isn’t for everyone. There is hard work, there is study and there are rules.

“She thrived,” said Alexa’s grandmother, Darlene Hochradel of Detroit Beach. “She had rules. She had structure.”

Alexa said her family and friends are proud of her for changing her life. And she admits she never was religious growing up.

“I was a punk atheist for years,” she said.

Now things are different. She lives with her aunt and uncle, former Monroe residents Lori and Steve Knezevich, in Imlay City because she had to get away from here, although it wasn’t easy.

“They literally had to pry my fingers off of Monroe,” Alexa said.

She’s now an intern as a youth minister for Lapeer Community Church. She tells her stories to the teens to let them know how drugs almost ruined her life. But she also wants to let them know that with guidance, self-sacrifice and faith, drug addiction can be overcome.

“Choosing to embrace Jesus as your savior is a very personal thing,” she said. “And I tried everything. But you have to transform your whole life. It has to be everything. It’s mind over matter.”

Alexa plans to enroll in college and become a corrections officer. She also is excited about her new life and a future.

“ There is hope,” she said.

Mrs. Knezevich is confident her niece will succeed. She knew that Alexa would be dead if she didn’t make up her own mind to change.

“ There is only so much you can do,” Mrs. Knezevich said. “It was up to her.”

Clearly the Life Challenge program is not easy. Goals must be achieved before participants graduate. Alexa did reach those goals. This February, she graduated. On Aug. 15, she had been sober 1½ years.

Alexa and those close to her are confident her past life is far behind and her future is bright.

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